The valuation of unprotected works: a case study of public domain photographs on Wikipedia

What is the value of works in the public domain? We study the biographical Wikipedia pages of a large data set of authors, composers, and lyricists to determine whether the public domain status of available images leads to a higher rate of inclusion of illustrated supplementary material and whether such inclusion increases visitorship to individual pages. We attempt to objectively place a value on the body of public domain photographs and illustrations which are used in this global resource. We find that the most historically remote subjects are more likely to have images on their web pages because their biographical life-spans pre-date the existence of in-copyright imagery. We find that the large majority of photos and illustrations used on subject pages were obtained from the public domain, and we estimate their value in terms of costs saved to Wikipedia page builders and in terms of increased traffic corresponding to the inclusion of an image. Then, extrapolating from the characteristics of a random sample of a further 300 Wikipedia pages, we estimate a total value of public domain photographs on Wikipedia of between $246 to$270 million dollars per year

Mindlessness and the Law

No less an authority than Milton Friedman has argued that improving the realism of assumptions in economic theory, although hardly essential to establishing the absolute validity of the theory (purely an empirical question), may offer several benefits. First, a “restructuring” (to use Posner\u27s term) of an assumption may help explain divergences between predicted and observed results. Second, an explanation of why a seemingly unrealistic assumption does not destroy the predictive value of a theory may strengthen the theory by connecting it to “a more general theory that applies to a wider variety of phenomena . . . and has failed to be contradicted under a wider variety of circumstances.” Also, a different and more “realistic” explanation of an assumption may facilitate an indirect test of the hypothesis by its implications. We hope this Article will make economic theory more attractive in all three of the above ways and will constitute an effective response to critics of law and economics. Part I of this Article reviews several behavior-based criticisms of economic analysis of law. In order to answer the criticisms discussed in Part I, we have included an introduction to psychological “script theory” in Part II. A brief description of the theory might have sufficed, but we hope that a fuller exposition, including some reference to empirical data, may more effectively provoke investigation and application to legal scholarship. Thus, in Part II we examine relevant models of human decisionmaking developed recently in the fields of psychology and social science, and these models are based on evidence that unconscious information gathering and assessment play an important role in human decisionmaking. Part III will use the models to suggest why economists\u27 seemingly unrealistic notions concerning human behavior need not blunt the value of their insight into the efficient deterrence rationale of the tort system. Section A of Part III accepts the validity of the handful of empirical studies demonstrating that people react to legal rules in the manner predicted by law and economics. We use the models described in Part II to suggest the mechanism by which those rules affect behavior. We conclude by defusing potential attacks that could be made on our explanation by researchers who demonstrate the existence of “cognitive illusions.” In Section B, we relax the assumptions underlying the economic model and consider Robert Ellickson\u27s claim that legal rules are frequently a less important determinant of behavior than cultural norms. We conclude that even if the assumptions underlying the economic model are faulty, law and economics remains a powerful tool for explaining the common law

Transaction Costs and Patent Reform

This article considers current proposals for patent law reform in light of a simple theory about intellectual property law: In a world without transactions costs, the assignment of property rights is not necessary to stimulate the optimal production of creative goods. Because potential users of inventions could contract for their creation, a compelling justification for granting property rights in these intangibles is the reduction of real-world transaction and information costs that hinder, or make impossible, contract formation between users and creators. Proposals for patent law reform, therefore, should be evaluated by whether a change in legal rights, or in the regulatory process increases or lowers these costs

Testing the Over- and Under-Exploitation Hypothesis: Bestselling Musical Compositions (1913-32) and Their Use in Cinema (1968-2007)

Some economists assert that as valuable works transition from copyrighted status and fall into the public domain they will be underexploited and their value dissipated. Others insist instead that without an owner to control their use, valuable public domain works will be overexploited or otherwise debased. This study of the most valuable musical compositions from 1913-32 demonstrates that neither hypothesis is true as it applies to the exploitation of songs in movies from 1968-2007. When compositions fall into the public domain, they are just as likely to be exploited in movies, suggesting no under-exploitation. And the rate of exploitation of these public domain songs is no greater than that of copyrighted songs, indicating no congestion externality. The absence of market failure is likely due to producer and consumer self-regulation